Early this morning I completed my first short story, a sci-fi called Pond Life. The story was inspired by a conversation on The Infinite Monkey Cage, a Radio 4 science / comedy chat show with Brian Cox and Robin Ince.

I was prompted to write a short story after an old friend set up a new digital publishing company. Well, this alone would not have motivated me to finally write something, but the $1000 prize for the most successful short story of 2014 on the platform did.

I received a lot of great advice and help from friends, including David Bishop (read his book review blog), Max, Rich Martin (Moozvine) and my good wife, Marcia, all of whom proof read, advised, criticised and generally pointed me in the right direction.

I was up until 4.30am this morning making the final changes. Max reading it through at around midnight and sending amendments via Facebook chat and Marcia proof read until 2am.

However, the book is not “published” yet. Rather than take the traditional (and outdated) route to publishing, the book will be released to the world under a Creative Commons licence. This means that anybody will be able to download it, re-publish it (online) and share with friends. However, before that happens it needs to reach the “release threshold“, which really means, everybody has to pay a little bit.

So, please, please, please help me get my first short story released. It is really rather good, I think you will enjoy it.

How? Pledge a few pounds (or dollars) towards its release. Discover not only a new sci-fi author, but also a new way of publishing and sharing stories online.

*the book will only be prize winning if it wins. But I predict a win because I know it is the best on the platform. Are authors allowed to be confident? I am making the most of it before the book critics lay into me!